Monday, 28 November 2016

Ebru Firat has been condemned to 5 years of prison in Turkey for having joined the Kurdish Freedom Fighters to fight AGAINST Isis/Daech (taking part in the heroic liberation of Kobane). As I explained in this previous post, the Turkish Islamo-Fascist state alleged that she was preparing a suicide attack in Istambul... and detained her when she was about to take a flight back to Toulouse!!! Fucking Turkish bullshit...

She is in prison waiting for a revision of her case. As you can imagine treatement in Turkish prisons to Kurdish prisoners is horrible, she has already lost 15 kgs and we can just hope that se won't have to go through the tortures that many other Kurdish prisoners have undergone. The French consul has repeatedly seen rejected the permission to visit her. Local and regional government in Toulouse/Occitanie are trying to help, having sent a letter to the French minister of Foreign Affairs demanding immediate action. There is a petition in change.org also addressed to him.

It's not easy to help, but the first step is making her case known to everyone and everywhere. You can share this url (as there is quite little information in English), or share these links in French:

You can also do an economic contribution to support her defense here. There are countless Kurdish men and women in her situation in cErdogan's nightmare state (journalists, HDP members, activists...) but she is a French citizen, so if public pressure forces the French government to take the issue seriously she could have some options.

Sunday, 27 November 2016

I have to admit with shame that I have hardly followed the strongly social and political filmography of the Greek-French director Costa-Gavras. Last Saturday they were screening Missing in the American Cosmograph (they mainly play recent movies, but they always leave some room to allow people to discover and enjoy some classics), so it seemed like a great plan.

Indeed it was. "Missing" is an excellent movie. A gripping story about the dissappearence of a young USA left activist in Chile during the days following Pinochet's coup d'etat, and the ensuing desperate search conducted by his wife and his father. It's even more passionate when you bear in mind that it's based on painfully true events.

Contrary to the recent Colonia film, where the Chilean horror regime is mainly the backdrop for the story, in "Missing" the story and the depiction of horrendous USA supported regime play an equal part. We are exposed to a clear view of the murdering and torturing perpetrated by the far-right military and we can see how the USA government officials helped with the assasination of the "Chilean dream". Most people only know of one September 11, that fateful day in 2001 when horror unleashed on USA soil, but few know that on that same date in 1973, the USA backed the assasination of the elected Chilean president Salvador Ayllende and the start of a inhuman regime that would end up with the lives of thousands of innocent Chileans (and the selling out of the country powerful economy to USA companies). This film acts then as a powerful and necessary reminder of how the USA have sponsored the most bloody regimes and dictatorships on every corner of the world (but particullarly in South America) for all these decades. When Trump threatens to "Make America great again" one should only expect the worst...

The film also explores the difficult relation between the conservative father and his daughter in law, a human rights activist living the painful wake up from the dream of freedom and equality that Allende's Chile represented. Over time, as the father discovers what his government has done and the cruelty of the regime, he'll end up admiring this corageous woman and the work that she and his son were doing. In a sense, we could say that he has lost a son but gained a daughter.

To sum up, an essential film to rediscover history and understand the present.

One day after the death of Fidel Castro, I can't find a better way to finish this post that putting up this picture of Allende and Castro. One can sense the intelligence and honesty on both faces. Probably Castro did some wrong things and made some mistakes, but he aimed to construct a better society and strove for it until his last breath.

Tuesday, 22 November 2016

ES6 proxies try to be so transparent that they don't offer a way to know if one object is proxied or not. Proxies work in a way that applying the instanceof operator or accessing directly to the constructor property of a Proxy will make you think that it's the original object rather than an Proxy. I mean:

So, what if for some reason you want to know if an object is a proxy or not? And what if you want to obtain the proxied object from your proxy? The simple solution I've come up with is including this functionality in your "get" trap. Write your get trap so that if you ask for a property like for example "_isProxy" or "_proxyTarget" they return the correct value. I mean, something like this.

I'll also mention something that is a bit confusing. In the different proxy traps, "this" refers to the proxy. In the get and set traps we also have a "receiver" argument. This receiver is also a proxy, but somehow not the same one!? Let's see:

Friday, 18 November 2016

Well, I guess such a title will have you pretty intrigued, what the fuck is this idiot going to tell us?

Hopefully there's not an ongoing "Chinese Holocaust". Chinese have not violently invaded a foreign land under the excuses of having belonged to their ancestors 2000 years ago (the current Chinese invasion of Africa is quite more pacific and not done on ethnic basis, just on economic ones). Also, the Chinese research and start up ecosystem is not in pair with the one in Israel. So, what is this all about?

Well, it seems that for "la racaille" (that self-victimised bunch of criminals making up a part of the population of certain urban areas in France), at least for the maghrebian and Muslim subsaharian racaille, the Chinese are seen with the same eyes that the Jews were seen by the Nazis. For these criminals the Chinese are wealthy people that make money out of some sort of dark business. They always have cash, and their women are infidels that do not cover their sinny bodies, so let's rob them, harass them and even kill them...

This is not science fiction, this is what is happening in Aubervilliers, one city in the infamous Seine-Saint-Denis department, in the surroundings of Paris. This city is one example of how the nice multiculturalism of 25 years ago has turned into a communitarian hell (thanks in part to the islamo-collaborationist stupidity of the Communist Party that has been in power almost uninterruptedly for 70 years). In the last years the Chinese community in the area has quite grown, which is great news, as Chinese people tend to be normal folks (many of them atheists) that work hard and strain to integrate in the country. One detail that in the past I guess was not a particular concern but in the last years starts to be more important for a percentage of the population, due to the discomfort with that other (religious...) community that does all efforts to not integrate and just keep aside complaining about everything, is that the East Asian community tends to put French names to their kids (quite different from all those third generation Mohammed...) This Chinese population is mainly involved in the textile business, and as I've said, work hard to prosper, so la racaille has been targeting this community in Aubervilliers, with continuous robberies, harassment, and sadly, murders. In the past it happened the same in Belleville, but hopefully either thanks to the police or to the actions of self protection by the Asian community, la racaille was beaten. By the way, Belleville and Menimoltant are 2 particularly interesting areas of Paris Intra-muros. These are 2 popular neighbourhoods where for the most part one can still enjoy the mixing of cultures (without a too notorious presence of that hateful medieval and colonising political religious misinterpretation...)

Other than the fact that these East Asians seem to have some cash with them, there has to be something more that spurs all these attacks, cause they look like fuelled by a profound hate. And yes, I think it's easy to think of a few reasons that put these attacks in the dirty bag of racist and ethnic crimes, rather than "normal criminality".
First, this East Asian community is doing now as the Vietnamese immigrants did in the 60's, they work hard, thrive and assimilate into the French Republic. For sure this causes a profound hate in a part of the Maghrebian and Muslim African criminal community. For people that base part of their identity in that false victimization used to justify their hatred for France and the complete failure in life, it has to be painful to see how a community that did not even speak the language when they got to the country has no problems to move ahead.
It's also important to note that traditionally a good part of the Maghrebian population (mainly those with a low educational level) is deeply racist. Don't be mislead by the fact of seeing "beurs" and blacks together in these criminal bands, as one black friend of mine (married to a Moroccan girl, yes hopefully not all Maghrebians are racists), explained me, if one of the blacks tried to have something with the sister of one of the beurs, probably trouble would happen.
And there is another big point that I can think makes these criminals burn with hate. When you see the pictures of the demonstrations organised by the East-Asian community to demand protection, you see tons of French flags. Yes, they feel like French citicens, they are or want to be part of the French community. Can you think of something more offensive for these criminals that harbor so much hatred inside against France? For la racaille it's not only that these Chinese are "yellow" and not muslims, it's that they feel French!!!

Hopefully one still finds glimpses of hope in the bad neighbourhoods, like for example the collective Femmes sans voile (women withou veil), a group of corageous and freedom loving French-Maghrebian women that rebel against the use of the fucking veil and any other imposition from the Islamist scum. Checking their site I've come across with another even more inspiring place, the site of the Conseil des Ex Musulmans de France. I just can say, BRAVO!!! (and please, don't take me wrong, I have Muslim friends that I really appreciate and I still think that an interpretation of Islam adapted to Europe is possible and compatible with the French Republic, but as an atheist I can not feel but joy when seeing people abandon Islam and embracing freedom)

Wednesday, 9 November 2016

Paris is one of those places in which wherever you are you can find an unexpected and impressive piece of architecture that you'll not find mentioned on any main guide (Vienna is another place where I have experienced this on a regular basis).

In my last visit this May I was walking along Boulevard Raspail (for Paris standards this is just one more Boulevard), enjoying the beautiful building facades, when I came across (at number 276) with an amazing depiction of the passage of time at a human scale, a passionate reminder of the joys and pains of our short existences. The shared existence of a couple is summarized in 3 pivotal moments.

First, the young couple is committed to ardent love:

Then the couple enjoys the fruits of their love:

And finally, the pain and sorrow of the moment when this shared existence gets truncated:

I love these reminders of our short lasting nature, all of a sudden they could seem to ruin a pleasant walk, but indeed it prompts me to enjoy its unique character, with the uncertainty of the next steps, with the certainty an end waiting somewhere, an end that can not be avoided but will be less painful the more we do of the path to it.

This beautiful work reminds me of the amazing paintings by Paul J. Gervais in Le Capitole of Toulouse. Again three moments in a lifetime. The author chose a rather less tragic representation, as it does not portray death, but love at 20, at 40 and at 60 years.

Monday, 7 November 2016

For a young (100.000 students), arty and vibrant city as it is, the music scene in Toulouse is not as appealing to me as maybe I could expect, but there are several bands that are well worth a post

Wellington 1084. This duo plays very intense and emotive post-rock, so even if this style has not been my cup of tea in the last years I pretty enjoy giving them a listen.

N3rdistan. half of the band are from the old Midi-Pyrénéés region (now part of the new Occitanie/Pyrénées-Méditerranée region) and the other half comes from Morocco, but they're now set in the region. They play a really interesting blend of electro and oriental music with beautiful and energetic vocals rapping in Arab and darija. Though pretty different, they give me a feeling similar to Serj Tankian or the amazing Asturian band XeraYou have a good bio of the band here.

Woodwork. These guys play pretty good 90's poliical hardcore. I knew about them through some concert posters (to which I could not attend), and while writing these notes I've found that they have just released their first Lp, good :-)

Krav Boca. Pretty interesting and very active project. Excellent rapped vocals (in French and Greek, not sure if they are Greek immigrants or just have Greek descent) over rock music. Their videos are really professional and pretty amazing, I wonder how they managed to get access to some of the scenarios (and I guess for the opening of Florence they used a drone for filming, wow, things move fast...). I finally saw them live yesterday, and they pretty rock. By the way, now they have 3 MC's rather than 2.

Plum MC. I knew about this female political rapper little after coming to Toulouse. After occasionally checking her bandcamp to see if she had released something new (her first work had some promising aspects), last month I came across with good news, she had a new record, and it's pretty good. I particularly like the last 2 songs.

La Vermine. More local political Rap (AnarcoRap) (yep, sometimes, like my first visit to Mix'art Myrys, the huge alternative, leftist community in this city makes me think that I'm living in a small Berlin). They are releasing a new record late this year. Their previous works did not particularly impress me in general, but this video is pretty good.

Cerna. Political rap again and again... The guy is originally from Paris, but he was living in the region for a while (early this year he was playing in Toulouse pretty often). Not sure about his current whereabouts.

Saturday, 5 November 2016

I'll do a short review here of some good films that I've watched lately (or not so lately).

Mesrine is a 2 part French film telling the story of probably the most famous French gangster, Jacques Mesrine, played by Vincent Cassel. It's a real must work, and though he killed innocents there are moments of the film where one can not help to feel a certain simpathy for this criminal.

Les Lyonnais. Another French gangsters film, partially based on a gang active in the 70's. If you are interested in French films with French subtitles you can get it from this nice web site (don't be put off by its old look, the site is still active and the links work).

Eye in the Sky. This is a pretty interesting modern war film revolving around the moral dilemma of collateral damage. For me part of the interest of this film lies on the high tech surveillance material (micro drones) displayed. One wonders how many years far we are from the most advanced material shown here (assuming that it does not already exist in some Israli laboratory). The second half of the film turns a bit too slow for me, but anyway is well worth a view.

100 Anhos de Perdon. Loyal to traditions (I've done so the 2 previous years) I felt I had to go to watch at least one film to the CineEspanha film festival. Choice was easy, an Argentinian-Spanish bank robery story directed by Daniel Calparsoro and screened on Saturday night, looked like a secure bet, and indeed it was. The film is not too impressive, but it's interesting enough to keep you entertained for its complete duration. I particularly like constant references to the effects of the economical crisis and political corruption in Spain. Some of the urban views of the city of Valencia are also particularly noteworthy.

Colonia. I have a certain weakness for films by Daniel Bruhl. Not that all his films are particularly good, but from all those that I have watched I can not think of any that is not worth the time. Colonia was quite a surprise to me, as I had not read the reviews nor anything I was expecting it would be focusing mainly in the days surrounding Pinochet's Coup d'Etat, but only the first part of the film revolves around it. Then it tells a fictional story of survival through love, set in a real and sickening product of the bloody dictatorship, Colonia Dignidad.